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Ideas On Budget Marriage Location Please

I am getting married next year. I have been looking at Italy (Tuscany - Umbria) but have also been recommended Lake Geneva - on the French side (Yvoire). Apparently it is much cheaper than the Swiss side of the lake. We are also going to take a look at Cyprus - although this would be my least favourite destination out of the three.

We are looking for the best value option available and have a budget of around £8000. We can't really go much higher than that.

It is only going to be a relatively small wedding (100 guests maximum).

Advice would be appreciated from anyone with experience of these regions, especially those with experience of weddings! Thank you!
The lower the price the better!

Bordighera,IM,Italy(between Ventimiglia and San Remo) beautiful church by harbor or rent the former English Church from the commune. Lovely,friendly seaside town (Genoa or Nice airports with train service from both),lodging is reasonable best recommendation to house entire wedding party is Gaia Vacanze in Valle Crosia(easy short walk or hop on the bus to Bordighera).

Are you talking about an actual marriage or just a celebratory party? There's a huge difference. For an actual legally binding marriage there are myriad requirements (have to be in the country for 30-40 days in advance, have translators, file all sorts of documents, etc., etc.).

This probably won't help you much, but a young couple I met earlier this year were married last year in Cyprus and had a wonderful celebration. They told me they chose Cyprus because they were on a very tight budget. Their picture is among these...

Congratulations! We got married abroad and it was a great decision. We chose Santorini one of the Greek islands - beautiful scenery, direct flights from parts of UK, plenty of wedding organisers. It was magic and a fraction of the price of a wedding at home. And no requirement to spend say 30 days there beforehand, I think we flew in about 5 days before the wedding.

We didn't look at any of your suggested venues, but I do know that Cyprus in particular Paphos is very popular. We have an apartment in a complex in Paphos that is constantly being used as an alternative to hotels for groups attending weddings. The popular venues there from chatting to people around the pool seem to be the Athena Beach, the Elysium Palace and Annabelle. All of those hotels I am sure would have wedding co-ordinators to organise the whole thing.

I think France may well have a 30-day residency requirement which may knock it off the list, so maybe check that out first?

Italy (Tuscany) is a popular destination with the Irish, so it is feasible as far as I can see without the residence requirement, although I have heard anecdotally that the paperwork side of things is more cumbersome in Italy. We had no trouble doing the paperwork for Greece, so I imagine Cyprus would be no problem either, especially with the UK connection and you might be able to get an official marriage cert in English which would be helpful too.

My instinct tells me that Italy or Cyprus will be easier to organise than France from the legal / logistic side.

Best of luck with the process and do tell us where you choose in the end! jane

100 people wow (have you worked out how much it will cost them to get there?) I budgeted £6k accommodation and food for 20 people for 4 days. Our guests come from all over Europe but think through what 100 people all flying from the same airport does to local car hire, aircraft book, you may do better hiring the aircraft! If you follow my name you can see some of the ideas offered to us.

StCirq and littlejane are right. Unless you are prepared to live in France for 30-40 days prior to the wedding, get all the paperwork the French require (in French!) and sit through a registry office ceremony (in French!) you can forget it. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: it's hard enough when you live, work and pay taxes here, so why people think they can just flounce over for a weekend and do it when they have little/no experience of the country I have no idea.